


The Speaking Silence

by reine_des_corbeaux



Series: My Tongue Could Utter [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sex Work, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Clothing Porn, Forced Feminization, Implied Martin Blackwood/Simon Fairchild, Jealousy, Kinktober 2020, M/M, Stockings, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Jon helps Martin with his stockings.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: My Tongue Could Utter [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050707
Comments: 18
Kudos: 61





	The Speaking Silence

The nights always begin like this, Jon standing with Martin before the wardrobe, inspecting the riot of colourful silk within as Martin checks the note Elias left him in lieu of a calling card. He studies it carefully before gesturing at a gown in the fine, ethereal pink of an early rose. It’s fanciful with ribbon and lace, and Jon commits its frills to memory before attending to other, more immediately pressing matters, namely stockings. 

Martin keeps his stockings in a tidy drawer when they aren’t strewn about his boudoir, or rather Jon keeps them there, rolled and organized by color. He looks for a pair that might suit the rose pink gown, only for Martin to lean over his shoulder. His hand rests against Jon for a moment as he stands on tiptoes, and Jon cannot tell if the tingling beneath it comes from the pressure of Martin’s touch or from the thrill of this sensation, this sudden closeness. He feels Martin’s breath hot against his ear. 

“Those,” Martin says, pointing at a pale pink bundle in the very back of the drawer. “Weren’t they the ones Simon gave me last time? He’ll want me to wear them tonight, then.” 

“I suppose he will.” Jon fishes the stockings out from the drawer as he speaks, careful not to snag the delicate silk, much as he’d love to see it ruined. 

It’s all Jon can do to keep from crushing the stockings in his hand until they wrinkle and warp and tear, but he holds them gently instead, finding matching garters in another drawer as Martin sits down on the chaise behind him. The stockings really are lovely, Jon thinks, unfurling them in the soft light of the boudoir’s lamps. They shine translucent as a misty sunrise, and they are likely more expensive than stockings have any right to be. But Jon hates them all the same, hates them and everything they represent. He turns back to Martin, who is smiling expectantly, holding out one hand for the stockings. He makes a little coughing noise, and it’s all Jon can do to resist him

“You’ll get snags in them if you put them on yourself,” Jon says. Martin rolls his eyes. 

“I’m not a child. I know how to put on my own stockings, Jon.” 

Jon knows that Martin does, but for all that he hates the stockings and the man who bought them, he still relishes the intimacy of these moments when he can make Martin as beautiful as possible. _It’s only pride in my work,_ Jon tells himself as he walks towards the chaise longue and towards Martin. 

“Yes, stockings for the daytime. Not for an… assignation with Simon Fairchild, madam.” 

Martin always flinches slightly at that last address, and Jon is certain that he thinks no one notices. But he cannot call Martin anything else, not in the lengthening shadows of the evening, not when Elias could come in at any moment to inspect Jon’s work, or make sure that Martin is ready for the evening. So he must call him “madam”, and the walls between them must remain. Jon is but Martin’s valet, with no claim to Martin’s heart, and Martin’s body is his patron’s and not his own. 

“Simon Fairchild can hang,” Martin says, with something like mirth in his eye even as he nearly spits out the words. “I’ll dress myself if it pleases me.” 

Arguing over stockings is, in its way, a game for them, but it is always a game Jon wins. He sinks to his knees before Martin’s feet, and places each stocking and each garter beside him. Martin extends one foot, and Jon takes the first stocking, properly rolled, and works it carefully on and over the heel. The silk is smooth beneath his hands, and so too, he knows, is Martin’s skin, pale beneath the pale pink fabric. Even so, he tries to avoid touching Martin’s bare leg as he rolls the stocking up over the curve of his calf, just above the knee. 

Jon does not look Martin in the eye as he works the stocking up his leg, nor does he look as he gently stretches one of the garters and draws it up Martin’s leg, careful that the tiny silk flower decorating its center stays perfectly even. It too is a pale pink, closer in shade to the gown still hanging in the wardrobe than to the stockings, and Martin lets out a soft, nearly inaudible breath when Jon lets it fall securely over his knee. 

“There,” Jon says. “That’s one done, madam.” 

He looks up, and hopes his face does not flush when he sees that Martin is biting his lip, looking intensely at Jon even as he schools his face into its usual smile. 

“Go on?” 

Jon moves to Martin’s other foot, and commences to roll the stocking up his leg once again. But this time, his hand slips, brushing against Martin’s skin instead of silken threads. It’s very warm, and very soft, and Jon’s heart stutters and leaps more than is seemly for a simple employee doing his work with all the required professional distance. He quickly pulls his hand away and works faster on the stocking, his fingers trembling, still feeling the warmth in his hand (or perhaps imagining it-- the touch was brief and light, not enough to mean anything but an inadvertent slip. Martin, who must by necessity be used to touch, will likely not have noticed it). 

Again, Jon reaches for a garter, and this time, he cannot stop himself from taking slightly too long to position it perfectly, making the silk flowers on each garter match perfectly. They do not, perhaps, need to be so neat, but Jon takes pride in his work. And even if he did not, there is something within him that thrills at the idea of these perfect stockings as only something he and Martin will see. Martin will be beautiful from the skin out, even in the places hidden from view, and it is half his own radiance and half Jon’s care and effort. That is how it must be. 

But still, Jon knows, others will see Martin’s stockings tonight. Simon Fairchild will peruse every inch of him, and send him home disheveled, his stockings and his garters all in disarray, his gown undone and his gloves stained. And Jon can do nothing about this, and neither can Martin. So he lets the garter fall into place in time to hear Martin gasp as though he has been holding his breath. 

“Finished,” Jon says at last. “Now, if you’d stand?” 

Martin does. His petticoats, pulled up to expose his legs, fall and hide the stockings from view. All around them, the shadows falling in through the window grow longer, and the sky outside purples as the lanterns in the boudoir flicker. Clad in silk and cushioned on carpets, Martin’s feet make no sound as he walks back towards the wardrobe. But his face is not quite returned to its usual benign smile, and he glances back over at Jon even as he walks away from him.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent entirely too long googling Victorian garters in order to write this. Fortunately, the V&A's website came through with some late Edwardian images, but this is total idfic, and therefore the historical accuracy or lack thereof of Martin's handwavy fantasy!1890s-ish garters is irrelevant. 
> 
> This fic was largely inspired by some very fruitful conversation on Discord about putting Martin in a corset and an AU in which Martin is a courtesan, Elias is his patron, and Jon is his rather possessive valet. 
> 
> Written for the Kinktober Day 11 prompt "Stockings". 
> 
> Title pulled from Christina Rossetti's "Echo".


End file.
